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One portion of this country was called the "Isle of Ely;" another the "Isle of Thorney;" another, partially drained by the monks, the "Isle of Croyland." In many parts half bog, it was quite impracticable for heavy-armed soldiers, and hence it offered a refuge to bands of patriots from all the neighbouring districts when worsted by the Normans.
Twelve hundred years ago its site was an island in the Thames known as Thorney Island, and a church was commenced there by Sebert, king of Essex, but was not completed until three centuries afterwards, in the reign of King Edgar, when it was named the "minster west of St. Paul's," or Westminster. The Danes destroyed it, and Edward the Confessor rebuilt it in the eleventh century.
The village of Wassengtone is mentioned in a Saxon charter as granted by king Edgar in 973 to Thorney Abbey. Hunting came next to war in those days, as the occupation of the nobility and gentry. The clergy engaged in it equally with the laity. The hunting establishment of the Bishop of Durham was on a princely scale.
There are two other isolated bits of Sussex on the south of the high road to Emsworth, the first containing the small hamlet of Chidham with a beautiful little Early English church; the next is occupied by West Thorney. Here is another church of the same period with a Transitional tower and a Norman font. This peninsula was until quite recently an island and the home of innumerable sea fowl.
Now shoot 'em along quick, Thorney," Holmes said to the secretary, as the Roumanian went out, and a heavy-set man with blond hair, whose blue eyes blazed fiercely behind his spectacles, entered. "Your name, please. And what do you know about the diamonds?" "Heinrich Blumenroth, formerly of His Majesty the King of Bavaria's royal gardens at Munich, Germany.
He was a strenuous controversialist, chiefly against the Lollards; but his free style of argument, and especially his denial of the infallibility of the Church, led him into trouble, and on being offered the choice of abjuration or death at the stake, he chose the former, but nevertheless was deprived of his bishopric, had his books burned, and spent his latter days in the Abbey of Thorney, Cambridgeshire.
Bartholomew they received a fresh cross of Huguenot, fleeing from France dark-haired, fiery, earnest folk, whose names and physiognomies are said still to remain about Wisbeach, Whittlesea, and Thorney. Then came Vermuyden's Dutchmen, leaving some of their blood behind them.
In like humour William of Malmesbury, writing in the first half of the twelfth century, speaks of Thorney Abbey and its isle. "It represents," says he, "a very paradise; for that in pleasure and delight it resembles heaven itself. These marshes abound in trees, whose length, without a knot, doth emulate the stars.
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